Stuff You Should Know - How Castles Work

Episode Date: April 16, 2010

In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the most famous fortified structure in the world -- the castle. Tune in to learn all about castles, from murder holes to modern fortresses. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's time to reboot your credit card with Apple Card. Apple Card is designed to help you pay less interest. Unlike other cards, it estimates how much interest you'll owe and suggests moves to help you pay off your balance faster. Also, you can keep more of your money. Apply now in the wallet app on iPhone and start using it right away. Subject to credit approval.

Interest estimates on the payment wheel are illustrative only and may not fully reflect actual interest charges on your account. Estimates are based on your posted account balance at the time of the estimate and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period.

Hey, everybody, do you ever scream at your printer or hurl empty ink cartridges across the room? We all do, which means that you likely suffer from cartridge conniptions caused by irritating ink cartridges constantly running out of ink. It's the worst, everybody. We can all agree on that. But thankfully, the Epson EcoTank Printer is the perfect cure.

It's cartridge-free, conniption-free, and prescription-free. With big ink tanks and a ridiculous amount of ink, you can finally kiss expensive ink cartridges goodbye. Yeah, so check out the Epson EcoTank. Just fill and chill. Available at participating retailers and at epson.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's over to my right. That would make this Stuff You Should Know. The most overheated, cramped, smelly, sweaty podcast on the market. I thought you were going to say overrated. No, overheated.

Because we were number three today in front of Mr. Ricky Gervais. Right, and since I don't recognize Alvin and the Chipmunks as a podcast, we're technically number two. Yeah, right behind Ira Glass. Oh, yeah, big surprise. We love Ira Glass. Let's just say that, because people are going to say,

why don't you like this American life? I know, that's the problem with having such a substantial library of podcasts. So when we go back like 50 episodes and revisit a joke, only the really hardcore SYSK listeners know what we're talking about. The true blues. The people send an email and they get 50 episodes back

and they're like, oh, I wish I would have held my tongue. Can we get on with this? Yeah, let's do it, Chuck. Did you ever, were you ever in the He-Man, arguably the most homoerotic action figure created? No, that was, I was a little old for that. Well, it was right in my wheelhouse, as you would say. Yes.

And I had a little toy that I like to call Castle Grayskull because that's what the manufacturers call it. Yeah. Have you seen this? Well, I've heard of it all. It was, yeah, it was pretty awesome. The cartoon was horrendous. Did you watch the cartoon?

No, I was too old for that. How many times do you have to go over my age? I don't know. Have you ever heard of the Bay City Rollers? Yeah, I know them personally. Anyway, I had this little toy called Castle Grayskull and it was this big plastic castle. And it was pretty awesome.

It had embattlements. It had, Tower? It had towers. It had, it even had a little overhang hanging off the back. And then the front entrance, the tunnel, was a mouth with fangs coming down. Cool.

And it was just generally one of the cooler toys I own to tell you the truth. Nice. And now that I've read how castles work, I could, where I'd go back in time, stand next to my younger self and be like, this is the tower. This is called the Port Colis.

This is a murder hole. And don't start smoking. Yes, I would say that. To young self? Oh my God. If there's one thing I could go back and change. Really? Well, if I had like three, four things

I could go back and change. Smoking would definitely be one of them. Yeah, it'd be taller. Oh wait, things you can really change. Yeah, I don't, time travel is no effect on your height. I would tell myself to grow taller. Okay.

Just when I still had the chance. Yeah. So let's talk castles, Chuck. Okay. Josh, the word castle, like everything almost, it's Latin, comes from the word castellum, which means a fortified place. That's exactly what it is.

And the French shortened it. Lazy French people that they are from castellum to castle. It means the same thing. And castles are actually very specific buildings. There's very specific features to them that make a castle a castle. Yeah.

They're generally European, although there are some castles found in like the Middle East and Japan. Sure. But for the most part, they were European in origin. Yeah, Germany. Lousy with castles.

10,000 of them. Yeah, tons of them. In Germany alone. And they only actually existed for about 500 years. Are they only under what construction for about 500 years during the high Middle Ages from the 10th to 15th centuries? Pretty cool.

Yeah, so let's talk about the history of castles. And not just historic castles, but the beginning of castles. Where do they come from, Chuck? Well, Josh, they evolved from the ancient walled cities. Back in like Troy and Babylon and Jericho, they would have big walls around their cities for fortification.

Sure. So it evolved from that into, the first ones were called a grad, I believe, is how you pronounce that, or a grode. And that consisted of basically wooden and earthen walls and then a gate with a moat around it. And that would become one of the hallmarks of the castle was the moat.

Yeah, you have to have a moat or else it's just. We didn't always. It's not a castle. It depended on the terrain. Sometimes if you're on like a rocky peak, you didn't have a moat because you couldn't and you didn't need it. But most castles are known for having moats.

Yeah, thank you for that correction, Chuck. Surely. Love to be corrected. There's another kind of castle that eventually became part of the modern and by modern I mean high middle ages castle called a Bergfried, which you may suspect is German. But it's actually based on a Roman design

that they would use these watch towers along their frontier. And those became the towers of later castles. Right, Josh, I believe that brings us to number three, which was the Mott and Bailey castle. And that consisted of a mound, which is the Mott. And that's within the open courtyard, which was the Bailey.

And that, of course, is always is enclosed by a wall and a fortified gate. That's the key. Right, so you put all these things together, fill them with bloodthirsty knights and pooping horses, and you have the castle as we recognize and love it. The whole property. Yeah, okay, so Mr. Smarty Pants,

you don't always have to have a moat. But most of them did have moats, right? So you had a moat, which is really just a ditch dug around the outer wall of the castle. Yeah, what I love about castles, dude, sorry to interrupt, is everything is so rudimentarily genius. You sounded like me just now. It was all just genius, but it was so basic.

They were like, well, we don't want people to get in, so let's dig a big ditch around it. Or let's build a big door with a big brace behind it. Yeah, yeah, and if you, there seems to be a lot of murderousness during this time. It was a very violent time. So most of the technology and ingenuity was based toward effectively killing people

in the most horrific ways you could imagine, right? So the moat, that was used to keep people out. Right, and if it were, you could fill it with water. Everybody filled it with sewage, human and otherwise, right? You don't see that in the movies. No, you don't, can you imagine how badly that smelled? Oh yeah. And if you had, you could keep it dry,

although again, you would fill it with sewage anyway. And if you kept it dry, likely you would bury sharpened stakes coming out at all angles. So you could push people into it and be like, Sionara, sucker. That's what they would say in Japan, right? Yeah. So you got your moat, you got your drawbridge,

which, you know, lower the drawbridge, extends over the moat so you can get in and out of the castle. And you've got the, you have the outer walls, right? And the outer wall, actually, all castles have outer walls. Some have inner walls. We'll get to that in a second. But the outer walls are actually two walls, right? Yeah, didn't know that either.

So you have the one wall and then a space and then another wall. And then in between the two walls, you fill with, you backfill with rubble or stone or gravel or something to really make these things just like brick houses. Right, right. And then some castles even had an outer, outer wall

called a shield wall, which was even taller. Right, so people could walk along the inside wall. Right. And not have their head lopped off with a flaming arrow. Exactly, which is true, they had those. Yeah, they did. That was a lot of things were made of wood, especially in the early days of castles.

Right. And this wood would probably be pretty, well, it's like a big tinder box. Sure. Is what you were walking around in. So a flaming arrow goes a long way. Yeah, it's very effective, right? There were also overhangs that were initially made of wood

that I found pretty cool. You remember I mentioned Castle Grayskull had one? Yeah, yeah. Originally these things were called hoardings. Okay. And they would have arrow loops, which are basically just narrow slits. Right, so that you can shoot through?

Right, and they would hang over the front of the castle. So when people were storming the front of the castle, you could shoot them with arrows, the arrow loops, but they also had the coolest sounding things of all time, murder holes. Yeah, I love these. Murder holes were holes, but you could shoot arrows. So basically if you're standing on a hoarding,

there were holes in the floor. So you could shoot arrows. Also, you could pour hot oil, hot metals. Hot whatever. Exactly. And the way that the entrances were arranged, when you're walking in the entrance of the castle, you've crossed over the drawbridge

and now you're walking in the tunnel, there's arrow loops on either side of you, and then above there's murder holes. So if you were able to breach the drawbridge in the gate, you were subject to having all sorts of hot, horrible stuff poured on you. And you were in big trouble. Not fun.

The other thing they had too for defense and for protection, while defense is in defending yourself, was the crenellation. Like when you see the top of the tower and it's one block is higher than the next block is low, the next block is higher, that was actually purposely done that way so soldiers could hide behind those blocks,

peek around the corner and fire an arrow, then hide behind the tall block again. And I would argue that crenellations are the most readily recognizable design of a castle. If you think about it, you know the little sand castle molds? Even those have crenellations on them. If they don't have the crenellations, it's really just a big rectangle.

Yeah, you're right. Chuck, you were talking about guys hiding behind the blocks of crenellation and then moving to the side and shooting an arrow. They also designed staircases in a clockwise circular fashion. Coolest fact of the show right here. Do you want to take it, buddy?

May I? Yes, please. You're right, clockwise while going up, this is because at the time soldiers were right-handed, they fought with their right hand, swung the sword with their right hand. If they were left-handed, by nature, they were taught to fight with their right because why?

Because left-handed people were considered evil at the time. Actually, the word sinister means left-handed. So weird, isn't it? So they designed it counterclockwise going up. So if you were flying up the stairs to go fight somebody, you had room on your right-hand side to swing your weapon and it wouldn't hit the wall. Right.

Isn't that the coolest fact of the whole thing? It is. And also, if you're running up the stairs and you're an archer, you have plenty of room to draw an arrow and shoot it out of one of the arrow loops. That too. Yeah. So, Chuck, that's the outer wall.

We've got the crenellations. We've got towers built into it. We have holdings and different variations on the holding. And then you have the inner wall. Inside the outer wall, you would have what's called a Bailey, which is basically it's a big open courtyard. So any time you see knights jousting, like the heartthrob Heath Ledger in a knight's tail.

RIP. Right? Where that joust was taking place was actually inside the outside wall of the castle. Yeah. And here's the thing. We'll talk about the sieges later. But once you storm into the castle,

it's kind of like, great, we're inside. But it's also like, oh, boy, we're inside. Right. Because now you're trapped. Right. And all the little dudes up there in the tower and on the walkways all of a sudden just turn around and start firing flaming arrows down at your head.

Right. Because at the very least, a castle would have an outer wall and then some sort of tower or inner fortification. A lot of castles actually had an outer wall, then the Bailey, and then an inner wall. And then within that was the tower. So yeah, you were just, you're toast, basically,

if you made it in. And you weren't, if you were feeling under the weather that was the day you died. Right. The courtyard, Josh, they also used it as a marketplace. They had festivals and fairs. They did soldier drilling, train horses. And then later, castles later on became more for the kings

and the noblemen and less military in nature. And they were used for gardens and fountains, that kind of thing. Right. And when the noblemen actually lived in the castles, which they did, but for the most part, castles were originally made for military purposes? Yeah. But then as the military technology advanced,

castles became much less strong or able to withstand attacks. Sure. So what was originally called the Keep, actually, what was originally called the Donjon, became the Keep. And the Keep. Donjon. Donjon. Or the Donjonson.

It was usually pastel. Right. That became the Keep. And that's where the lord of the manor, whoever owned the feudal serfs, lived. Right. The other thing, because obviously you need a lot of people to keep up a castle,

to work the kitchen, blacksmiths, carpenters, there were residential apartments inside, which you never really think about, the fact that they had people living there on site. So it's sort of like a little live, work, play scene way back in the Middle Ages. Right. I just assume that feudal lords slaughtered all the workers

after the kill. Exactly, yeah. There were also chapels, Chuck. And there's a castle in Scotland. And the name escapes me right now. But it is supposedly the most haunted castle in the world. And the reason why is one of the things that happened there was the feudal lord, the person who owned the castle,

his brother was saying mass in the chapel of the castle. And he came in and murdered his brother, beheaded him while he was saying mass. That's probably bad luck. I don't think, I think running over gravestones is on par with that, with your car. I would say so. Yeah, it's pretty bad stuff.

Yeah, so they had chapels. They had live and priests many times because they went to church every day back then. They had the Great Hall inside the castle, which is what you, when you see them drinking the mead and feasting at the big table, it's in the Great Hall. Right. They had storage, obviously, for their food

and the horse food and all that kind of stuff. And little known fact, inside the keep, most rooms were heated with a fireplace. Yeah, I saw that. That was worthy of putting in here. I thought that was interesting. Chuck, one of the things that I hadn't thought of until I read the sardic, well, it makes complete sense

is that castles needed to have a self-sufficient water supply. Oh, yeah. So you had to have a well within the castle walls. Sure. Right? Why? Well, because if you were trapped in there and we'll get to the siege later on.

Oh, that was my segue into the siege. Oh, really? Well, you need to have your water, because when people siege, they kind of basically surround you and say, no one's coming out to get anything. Right, for months or years. For a long time, so you better have your water and your food. Right.

And they said it just like that, I think, actually. Yeah. I thought you were going to mention the dungeon. That's why I didn't know you were moving on. Well, yeah, the dungeon was originally up high. Yeah. When it was called the Don Johnson, like you said. And then that became the keep, and the dungeon

was moved down low. Yes. Down low. So that was just another interesting fact I thought was dungeons used to be, like in the upper reaches. Yeah. You always think of dungeon as below the ground. Right, but they're harder to escape from.

Exactly, dude. Bingo. The other thing they had, Josh, besides the wells, because they needed to get their water, was they used cisterns to collect rainwater. Very green living type of thing going on back then. Right, right. Very smart to do so, though.

Yeah. So Chuck, we were talking about sieges. Remember that? Yeah, back to sieges. So let's say that you have a standing army within your castle and you're a feudal lord, and you may or may not have just murdered your brother while he was saying mass. But otherwise, everything's hunky-dory,

and then all of a sudden, an invading army from another nearby lord comes up. So you basically batten down the hatches to use a metaphor that doesn't really make any sense whatsoever, because it's nautical in nature. Sure. But basically, you try to fight them off as much as possible. But also, you've got all of your entrances closed and guarded,

and you've got people ready with hot oil at the murder holes and all that. And like we said, this can last for months or years. Yeah, the impression I got was that a lot of times, there was never even any fighting going on when they did the Surround and Wait You Out technique. Right, and it actually led to the fewest casualties, because a lot of times, the invading army

could negotiate the surrender of the castle. Well, true, but the other side of the coin is, if you're going to be the army that surrounds the place, you've got to have your food and water too. Right, so people inside the castle would use flaming arrows, catapults with flaming boulders maybe, and shoot them into the countryside to set it on fire so the invading army couldn't go get supplies from it, right?

Yeah, or forage around and hunt and that kind of stuff. Right, you could see some invading army guy going, the berries, they're on fire. That's what we counted on. The other cool thing too, if you were the invading army, you could catapult, and this is not just for Monty Python, you could catapult like a dead cow, diseased cow. Or diseased human.

Or diseased dead human into, or I guess a diseased live human. All bets are off. I'm not dead yet. And you can catapult them over the wall, and all of a sudden, this bovine diseased animal is just like splattered in the middle of your keep. Yeah, and you're in big trouble. Yeah.

And I think probably the other reason that laying siege to, well, just waiting, that kind of siege was favored was because the whole reason you're attacking this castle is to probably get the castle. I would think so. So you want as little damage done to the castle as possible. Yeah, sure. Because if it took five, I think, or two to 10 years

to build a castle, you don't want to wait that time. You just go wait for some other shmo to build his and invade it. And then take it. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. That's the broad waterway. Right.

One of the other ways, Josh, and this you would think is right out of the cartoons, but it actually happened to get into a castle, is you would use a scaling ladder, and you would put a big tall ladder, and you would climb up it. But just like in the cartoon, you could just go up there and push the ladder off once the dudes are on it if you were strong enough. Or you could shoot the flaming arrows at their head,

which is our favorite technique. Throw objects down, pour hot oil on them, same deal. Right. To get around this, you could create a, what are they called, Chuck, a siege tower? Yeah, build your own portable tower, essentially. Right. And you have a bunch of soldiers inside,

and they are waiting while some other soldiers down on the ground are pushing this tower right up against, well, as close as they can get to the castle. And then the door opens, and guys come streaming out. Yeah, dude, they would lower a plank across, you know, like a pirate ship would do. Let's say when they pulled up to another pirate ship, and they would storm that way from up top.

Yeah, I think that appeared in like the last Lord of the Rings movie. No, OK. Don't even say that. Yeah, they used that device in the last Lord of the Rings movie. Oh, cool. Yeah.

But Josh, that is not my favorite. And when I was talking about rudimentary genius, the battering ram. Oh, yeah. You build big door. We take big pole smash door. You know, it's funny. The fuzz still use that today.

Oh, yeah, those little metal things? Yeah. I want one of those. You can get one. You can also, you should probably dispose of the complimentary brass knuckles that come with your order, though. Right.

So yeah, the battering ram, obviously, was a big tool for the invading army. And some of them were covered in shields to prevent the flaming arrow from hitting their head. Some were wide open. And then to defend it, once again, rudimentary genius, they would slide padding down in front of the door. So they're like, oh, here they come with the battering ram.

Let's throw this mattress up against the door. Yeah. Or it's again. I think that that's used in modern storming techniques by the fuzz and criminals. They would shoot flaming arrows into the door as well. Yeah, because it was wood. So catch the door on fire, or maybe you

can weaken it a little bit. I think any time there was wood, flaming arrows came into play, right? You always had to have a flaming arrow at the ready. Castles actually entered decline, well, at least for military purposes, because of the invention of something we call the cannon. Yeah, once you had superior firepower,

it didn't matter how big your wall is. Exactly. Oh, we've left out one siege technique that I thought was awesome. The tunneling? Yeah. I knew you were going to say that. This sieging army would dig a tunnel all the way

under the castle walls, right? And then they would use timber supports to hold the thing up while they were digging. When they finished digging, they would come back out, set the tunnel on fire, the timber supports would burn, and the wall above would collapse, because there was no longer any support. Pretty cool.

Isn't that awesome? Yeah, it didn't make sense to me at first, but then I got it. So this is what you had to do to make a wall collapse. Then the cannon comes along, and all you have to do is shoot a couple cannonballs in the same place, and then the wall collapses, right? So castles kind of fell out of use. But strangely enough, history repeated itself.

It actually came full circle, because remember, we were talking about the predecessors of castles where earthen walls and wood, and that's what we went back to, because earthen walls, we found, could sustain the impact of a cannonball. Wow. So like colonial forts? Yeah, yeah.

They were made of earthen walls and wood? And they kind of replaced the, well, not replaced, but as far as the military outpost replaced the castle. Exactly, and they were also really speedy. Apparently, the colonial army could put up a fort in basically 24 hours. Wow. Yeah.

Instead of two to 10 years. Yeah. Or 30 years, right? Oh, is that how long some of them took? That's how long one in Arkansas was taken. Oh, yeah, let's talk about this guy. Another Frenchman named Michel Gouillot and Mary Lynn Martin worked on a project in France called Project Guilodin.

So out of my league with France. And they are basically building a castle in the Bordeaux region of France using the old techniques. It started in 1997, expected to take about 25 years. And I went to the website day, and it looks pretty rad. It looks pretty cool so far. Yeah. It's like more than one third finished.

And it's open to the public. It's open. Well, that's how they're paying for it with tourist money. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And they use all ancient tools. Not ancient, but yeah, ancient. No, not ancient.

Ancient. Not pretty historic, but you could make the case that it's ancient. Like wooden calipers. They have a rope with knots tied in it to measure things out. They're quarrying the limestone by hand, carving the bricks by hand. They're transporting it from the quarry to the site by horse.

Not just a horse, but a horse-drawn wagon. Right, yeah. And that's actually in the article. And then we got an email from Dana in Arkansas who said, who turned us on to this guy before I read the article, he's actually doing the same thing in Arkansas now. Yeah.

He said, I will build one in Bordeaux and Arkansas. So random. It is random, but it looks like it's going to be awesome. Yeah, and it's called the Ozark Medieval Fortress. And it opens actually in May of this year for the public. And I think for like $50, you can go see the thing in progress. And once again, it's like a 20-year project.

Or you can go to a major regional mall and have a nice chicken dinner at medieval times. True. Or you could go see the Hearst Castle. They're like some rich dudes later on in the 20th century who said, you know, I want my castle. What says that I own the labor of 25% of America? A castle.

Yeah, Hearst Castle's awesome, though. You ever been there? I haven't. I've seen pictures. Yeah, really cool. Yeah. And there's a castle in my neighborhood. What?

Yeah, there's a castle in Oakhurst. Have you ever seen it, Jerry? Yeah, it's like a five-minute walk from my house. I walk by there with the dogs all the time. Sweet. It's like a small house, and it's got the tower, and it's built of rock. I'll have to go check it out.

Yeah, I could probably find a picture of it. Isn't there a castle that's a mausoleum that used to be in one of the mall parking lots, Avondale Mall parking lot? No, it's a Walmart now, but it wasn't a castle, but it was a stone mausoleum. Oh, OK. Close enough, right? Yeah, this castle in Oakhurst is kind of cool,

but every time I walk the dogs by there, some dude pours hot oil on me, so it's kind of off-putting. Nice one, Chuck. Nothing more needs to be said after that. I don't think so. So if you want to learn more about castles and see some cool pictures of castles, actually, there's a bunch left in this article we didn't cover.

You can type in castles in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. OK. Josh, I'm going to call this email from Anna. She seems pretty cool. And I think Anna is from Poland. Was there a colon? Email from Anna, colon?

She seems pretty cool. Or was that, or she seems pretty cool? She does. I think she's Polish, so that inherently makes her cool. OK. Hi, Josh and Chuck. I have to thank you for the Hiccup podcast. As it reminded me of how special I am in my 27 years

on this planet, so she's either 27 or she's been living on Earth for 27 years. She's Martian. She's 40. I've acquired exactly two superpowers. One, a photographic olfactory memory, which I've had since childhood, and two, the ability to cure my own hiccups just by thinking about them, which

I perfected once I was of legal drinking age. The latter superpower is made for a hilarious party trick. Basically, if I get hiccups while imbibing of the sweet, sweet booze, that's how I knew we'd like her. Yeah. All I have to do is pause for a second, concentrate on just the hiccups, and they go away within just a few moments.

Of course, strangers at parties don't know this, so I can pretend that I am plagued by uncontrollable hiccups. And the only way I'll get cured is if, say, for instance, someone does a keg stand or a guy gives me a kiss. Pretty smart. She is wily. Now, I know that with great power comes great responsibility, so I have resisted the temptation to use this ability

for evil so far. My only hope is that I don't become so blinded with power that I turn to the dark side and use my hiccups to start a major war of influence on an election, or influence an election. Anyway, how about a future podcast on burping? Anna says that. And she says, kudos to Chuck for having good taste in music.

Are we seeing the flaming lips myself this year? And her email signature, she's written in before, has a Charles Bukowski quote. It's the other way, and now she's cool. What is it? The best part of a writer is on paper. The other part is usually nonsense. Nice.

And it's probably followed by a hiccup and a burp. Well, thanks for that, Anna. We appreciate the email. It's pretty cool. If you have a special power, if you have a great Bukowski quote, or if you can tell us your age in Martian years, we want to hear it. Put it in an email, spank it on the bottom,

and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com home page. You're ready to travel in 2023. And since 1981, Gate One travel has been providing more of the world for less.

Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com.

Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. When Las Vegas welcomes you to Awakening, a new theatrical experience created by award-winning artists enriched by spectacular sound, meet colorful characters, and journey with them through wondrous realms. Experience Awakening. Get your tickets at Awakening.com.